No, they don't. Steve is the CEO, what he says goes. I'm sure there's a bunch of other fools there who think Win8 is wonderful too (and have advised him of such, and of course some of them came up with it in the first place), but the only opinion which really counts in a corporation is the one person at the top.

Only relatively small companies can work like that. Ballmer wouldn't even have enough time to review every decision made inside Microsoft. He most probably has a bunch of "lieutenants" inside the company (key persons such as technical directors and product managers) who also steer the company when it comes to decisions.

Well of course he has lieutenants, but they don't call the shots on major decisions, they can only advise him. Windows 8 is not something his lieutenants can just build and put out in the market without the CEO's say-so; it's such a huge thing to the company as a whole it had to have his approval. Plus, part of the impetus for Win8's Metro interface is this crazy idea of having a single UI across all devices, and that's something that spans company divisions, and again, would require CEO approval. Ballmer certainly isn't involved in every little detail of everything MS does, but for the really giant decisions like this, it's unfathomable to think he didn't at least take a look at it and sign off on it. And if you buy into hairyfeet's theories, Win8 is probably largely a product of Ballmer's insistence of trying to one-up Apple, because he's pissed that they got so popular with phones and tablets when MS's efforts in those spaces (which predated Apple's by many, many years) were all so lame and unsuccessful.

Windows 8 is not something his lieutenants can just build and put out in the market without the CEO's say-so; it's such a huge thing to the company as a whole it had to have his approval. Plus, part of the impetus for Win8's Metro interface is this crazy idea of having a single UI across all devices, and that's something that spans company divisions, and again, would require CEO approval.

At the end of the chain, the approval of CEO can be as simple as "yes, looks good, let's push it". But the design and functionality, big building blocks of the new Windows, depend on so many other people too.

I believe you'll find OEMs are buying Windows 8 licenses and 'downgrading' their machines to Windows 7 instead. Everyone I know who's bought a PC in the last few months has bought one with Windows 7 because Windows 8 is an utter disaster.

Windows 8 on the desktop is broken. This isn't a subjective tastes issue. It is objectively horrible.

Unless you can explain why someone in a desktop would actually *want* to be subject to tablet limitations like full screen apps, or having to dock apps at specific locations in your screen if you want to work with more than one at a time. I can see why it would be beneficial to be able to run the tablet apps, but if you have a mouse and keyboard, by default they should be placed inside a desktop window that you can do whatever with. Instead, we're being guided by default to use tablet apps instead of desktop ones, and going to a horrible screen that shows a limited set of what you have installed instead of getting a well-organized menu.

If you install classic shell, Windows 8 is perfectly usable, but it doesn't really add anything to what was already available with Windows 7.

Windows 8 on the desktop is broken. This isn't a subjective tastes issue. It is objectively horrible.

You sound like those fox news commentators insisting that it's a "fact" that Obama is a socialist and "science" that women belong at home with the kids. Simply throwing the words "objective" and "fact" into a sentence doesn't make a statement either. The word you're looking for is "opinion".

Why would someone want to be subject to limitations like full screen apps? One reason: easier window management. When I'm on an ultrabook I don't have 10 windows open everywhere, there simply isn't enough space. Snapping Skype to one side and IE to the other is superior to me having to juggle arbitrary windows.

With arbitrary dividing spacing I would rather have dockable windows in defined panes than floating windows most of the time. Almost all of my high end applications have moved to a docked/paned windowing system. The few that haven't like 3ds max are a #()@# nightmare of overlapping dialog windows trying to get to the one I want.

I love AeroSnap in Windows 7 but I really wish I could define an arbitrary divide point and maintain that point. Instead aero snap means I have to snap and then resize new windows. Which is a hassle with a trackpad or touchscreen.

Lastly... that's so far only in the Tablet/Laptop side of the OS so I don't know why you're bitching. Regular old school anarchy windowing is still completely in tact (and enhanced) in windows 8. And for Tablet/Laptop apps it's already really nice even if needing a little more polish (see 8.1+ enhancements). I'm hoping that by 8.2 and with the addition maybe of vertical splits in the dock paneling they start offering it as an alternate windowing system for the desktop.

Also menus are idiotic. If you're using the start menu like it was designed in 1995 you're objectively slower than someone who just hits the start button and types in the first 3 letters of the application name.

If you click the "All programs button" on the start screen (Just like you have to press the "All programs" button in the start menu, you'll get taken to a full organized list of applications. And with the tweaks in 8.1 it'll be even more usable than the "well organized menu" since you can sort by how frequently you use your apps. You shouldn't be wasting a second of your time curating your start menu.

And if you really were a power user you wouldn't have frequently used apps in your start menu, you would pin them to the taskbar like you've been able to do for over a decade. The fact that you're trying to use Windows 8 as if it was Windows 95 is your problem not Windows 8.

Just a reminder: Most people don't use the "All Programs" list. They either use their desktop, on which you can hold tons more icons than large boxes, or type in their program and click the one that pops up.

Metro can show fewer icons than the (95/NT4) desktop. It also has no visual indication that users can just start typing after hitting the start menu to find programs. As it is inferior to both 95/NT4 and 7, one can argue that Metro is a 30-year backward slide in interface design.

I find the start menu much more navigable than the start screen in Windows 8. Giant icons in metro is means less stuff up there available, so the first thing most people do is go to "all apps". Then you've got a 2 dimensional grid of smaller stuff. However that is less convenient in many ways; start menu is top to bottom, with vertical scrolling, but start screen is top to bottom and left to right with horizontal scrolling which is very disconcerting.

Also by default start menu keeps things in sub-folders. Thus my newly installed game will have a folder all to itself, including the game, readme, and miscellaneous files. This keeps the menu list shorter, compared to the "all apps" on the start screen where everything is expanded by default so I'm scrolling (sideways) through many more elements than the start menu had.

Also consider the awful icons you get in metro. A flat square with a smaller icon in the center of it, many of the icons which look exactly the same as others (ie, all document files are identical). So you are reading the text only here, the icons get ignored. This leaves a huge amount of space between each name in the start screen, which means you can't visually scan as easily through the squares list looking for the name you want. Start menu is compact; start screen is spread out with wasted spaced.

When I use start menu it is for a couple reasons essentially: to find things that are seldom used or hard to find, or to find things that are used often but which can't have on-screen icons. For the former, the start screen does not speed up the searching and actually slows things down. For the latter, metro makes it difficult to find control panel or shutdown (without using undocumented shortcuts that the average user will not know).

I don't use start menu in windows 8 because I don't have a replacement, so on occasion I do use start screen. I always find it very clumsy. I also find myself pinning more stuff to task bar than I used to, with more icons on the desktop than I used to. I hate that, I want a relatively clean desktop.

Classic Shell makes Windows 8 tolerable, but it doesn't fix the OS's more serious flaws. Microsoft took Windows all the way back to 1.0 by eliminating overlapping windows with the modern interface. Even with classic shell installed, that flaw is not fixed.

But there's nothing in Metro you need or want. Skip it entirely. All built-in metro apps are buggy or poorly designed (though will likely be refreshed in 8.1), and you can't even get free third party apps without first signing up for an official Microsoft Account (unsure if there are alternate ways to get apps like you can on OS X without going through apple's equally stupid store). Most everything you can do in metro you can already do better in a web browser or with a desktop application.

Hmm, I just walked across my design company's open-plan office floor and saw a Mac Pro under every desk and not a single fanboi was found.

"Linux users use Windows exactly because our lives depend on it."

Can't decide whether to go with "Drama Queen" or "Pathetic 1st World Problem". I use Linux, OS X and Windows pretty much every day and couldn't care less. Ok, made up my mind, I've going with "Grow Up".

There are some serious ideas here. Putting start menu back is serious, even if some elitist power users think that no one on the planet needs it. Also combining all the control applets into a single control panel is a serious idea, unlike the divided world with Windows 8. Dumping charms bar is a serious idea as there's no real need for it to be a separate hard to find pop-out bar.

Things change sometimes, that is true. Sometimes for the better. However in Windows 8 case it is clearly a matter of things

Vista comes out - Everyone says: "But it sucks and it breaks compatibility!" (Yes, it sucked initially, but it was decent enough [emphasis on decent] right before 7 came out.)
7 comes out - Everyone says: "But Vista sucked! Why would I leave the stability (editor's note: HAHAHAHAHA!) of XP for 7 when it is just an update to the terribleness of Vista? (7 was great on release and is still great to this day.)
8 comes out - Everyone says: "WTF,

The parent could also just be your typical corporatist/fanboy who'd prefer that (other) consumers shut the fuck up, do as they're told, and bend-/roll-/fork-over, and spare him or her their worthless opinions, criticisms, suggestions... excuse me, "bitching."

The real problems are quite simply Meto is useless for App Development, Your are limited to the features you can do in JavaScript. It ok for simple games and widgets... But for an App the does real work, no. They should expand the Metro UI to fully use the computer that it is running on.

My only gripe with W8 is the Metro interface is flat you can't have a tile for one application and then have all the tiles for it's other components underneath. Other than that it goes like stink. I believe the low sales have more to do with desktop/laptop sales plummeting.

Have you actually used Windows 8? I've used it exclusively at home since January. It's fine if you just use it without stressing that oh-my-god-it's-different. It's definitely not perfect, but it's fine. The Metro apps are hit and miss; some are okay on a desktop—Mail, Calendar—though probably a majority of the others would clearly be better on a tablet—People, Music, app store, Weather, Skype. But nothing at all stops you from using desktop apps (like Windows Live Mail, Windows Media Player, Skype for Desktop, etc) instead. When I upgraded from 7 to 8, I used them all for a while, just to see. More recently, though, my main use of Windows 8 has been as a launcher for Emacs.

My only actual gripe about UI/UX is that there are no visual clues (like there are on Windows Phone) for settings.

On the other hand, I do have some substantive complaints about Windows 8:

Spooling print jobs from Office 2013 sometimes just hangs. And by "sometimes" I mean "nearly always." I had to downgrade to Office 2010.

About once every other day, the whole OS just hangs. I can't even get the Task Manager to come up; sometimes I can't even get Ctrl-Alt-Delete to work. I just have to hold the power button down and reboot. To be fair, this is probably caused by the beta driver for a USB wireless adapter (Netgear's only released the beta for Win8).

Many apps take noticeably longer to load than on 7. It's not crazy, but I can tell the difference between instantly and a five-second delay.

I'm sure if I set my mind to it I could think up a few more. But then, I could probably do that about OS X, Windows 7, Windows XP, Debian GNU/Linux, openSUSE, and OpenBSD too. (Those are all the OSs I've used in the last year or so.)

The suggestions involved are klunky and the idea of splitting it into 3 OSes is going the wrong way. Windows RT is a disaster because it lacks app compatibility. MS needs to retire it and fully embrace x86 now that intel has fixed it with Haswell.

All that needs to be done to "fix" the start menu issue is make it so the task bar never goes away and the desktop background stays persistent but faded out. You click "START" and tada, the tiles appear right on top of your desktop. It is a simple solution, should be easy to present and works equally as well in mobile touchscreens as it does mice.

Had they just called it RT, or Surface or Metro or something other than Windows, the app compatibility wouldn't be a problem. OSX application support or, out of the box anyway, X or Gtk support didn't harm Android or iOS. The whole thing supports the same CLR as Windows so...

I think what's really hurting them is the insular nature of Microsoft. Spreadsheets aren't cool. Using Power Point in ads is more likely to turn off a user than turn one on.

You're got to look at it from a business perspective. Microsoft is a 'traditional' software company: They make a product and sell it. They have no model for continuing to make money from their product post-sale, so they are highly dependent upon keeping customers continually upgrading. An increasingly difficult task - Windows XP remained popular for many years after MS intended it to die. Compare to Apple or Google: They don't just make products, but make an ecosystem around it - iTunes, , the app stores, tie-ins to other services, advertising. Every iPhone and Android device is a revenue stream to Apple or Google well after the initial sale.

Microsoft wants to copy that. It's a great business idea. Not always good for end-users though - the factor that enables the ecosystem business model is device usage restrictions. Apple couldn't make money off the iPhones if people were able to install just anything from anywhere, without the App Store taking a cut.

Apple couldn't make money off the iPhones if people were able to install just anything from anywhere, without the App Store taking a cut.

Apple makes as much or more revenue off iPhone hardware sales ($22B) alone than all of MS according to their quarterly financials [apple.com]. While Apple makes money off of apps and content ($4B before they take their cut), it not as much as what they make on iOS hardware ($30B).

Except I really don't see what incentive Microsoft has to push people off old versions of Windows.

After fall, most people don't buy "Windows". They buy computers, which happen to have Windows on them. This version of Windows usually is accompanied by a license that specifically states that the version of Windows that came with the computer is not - legally - transferable to another computer. And thanks to the lack of installation CDs and OEM locking , it is increasingly difficult for end users to take a ver

You're got to look at it from a business perspective. Microsoft is a 'traditional' software company: They make a product and sell it. They have no model for continuing to make money from their product post-sale, so they are highly dependent upon keeping customers continually upgrading. An increasingly difficult task - Windows XP remained popular for many years after MS intended it to die. Compare to Apple or Google: They don't just make products, but make an ecosystem around it - iTunes, , the app stores, t

The suggestions involved are klunky and the idea of splitting it into 3 OSes is going the wrong way. Windows RT is a disaster because it lacks app compatibility. MS needs to retire it and fully embrace x86 now that intel has fixed it with Haswell.

I suspect that Intel hasn't 'fixed it' in a sense fully agreeable to Microsoft:

When a PC sells, there are two main winners: Microsoft and Intel. Everybody else gets to make it up in volume. With desktops and larger laptops that doesn't vex Microsoft quite as much(since AMD anchors the low and some of the midrange and Apple is in the same boat as they are). If MS wants a bright, shiny, touch-whatever future, though, sharing the margins with the single vendor who can implement x86 sufficiently efficiently to

I'm curious about why people say that. The alternatives people are choosing over WinRT are iOS and Android, and neither of them have app compatibility with the desktop. People don't complain about them not having app compatibility, but they do complain about WinRT not having it. Is it an expectation problem?

The issue is that WinRT has to offer *something* that IOS and Android do not in order to gain share.

They didn't pursue lower price, their offerings are no less expensive than Apple.

The didn't pursue better specs. They focused on Tegra 3, which is respectable but dated. Their screen resolution is downright atrocious compared to comparably priced products. While Android and IOS both have high ppi displays, MS has been left behind on this front.

They don't have more apps. Android and IOS had to build their ecosystems from scratch, but they had early mover advantage. After letting that situation simmer for years, they release a product with a paltry number of apps despite having a legacy of the most application compatibilty of any platform. They don't even have app compatibility between their phone and winrt as it stands (though that wouldn't have helped *much*, it still is a sign that they made a mistake compared with the strategies of Apple and Android).

Basically, every possible advantage that MS could have brought to market, they failed to do so. Like it or not, their best hope was/is to focus on x86 solutions where their application compatibilty can really come into its own.

The suggestions involved are klunky and the idea of splitting it into 3 OSes is going the wrong way.

I'd agree that there's no point in splitting it into 3 different OSes, but I think a better solution is to have the Metro stuff be an optional installation (similar to the Media Center stuff) for desktop computers. The insistance on pushing touchscreen UI elements onto the desktop is a fundamental problem. You can reorganize the start menu and change the look, but having a full-screen menu that obscures your desktop and currently running applications causes a context shift which is needlessly disorienting

You're underestimating the power of default. The new user has first to know any alternatives exist -- no distro lists better desktop environments with any prominence strong enough to draw the user's attention -- if at all. Then, after the new user has played with what was installed by default for a while, there are two possibilities:* he sees this "Linux" thing sucks and goes away (because all he saw was Gnome3)* after several hours of learning how to do basic things, he'll be too tired to try alternative

Suggesting Linux as an option to fix Windows is like proposing the roman alphabet to a scribe-dominated, hieroglyphs-dependent Egypt. Insane at first, insane not to accept the proposal later. I only wish people stick to free software principles when transitioning, because e.g. with Android pay apps, many people are soon going to have the same problems people had with proprietary applications back in the 90s.

> You know what? Linux on the Desktop is a complete and utter failure, even after all this time. It's utterly unusable.

So you installed the most antiquated UI and call it a failure. I don't believe you run Linux, I believe you're just trolling. If you were serious about desktop usability you'd have installed Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, OpenSUSE, or Fedora - or considering you've been running Linux for 20 years (some of us actually HAVE been running Linux for 20 years but based on your post it is obvious you have not) you would simply have installed a more intuitive and capable desktop.

Linux is not a failure on the desktop - it is superior to both Windows and OS X in many ways. What it lacks is consistency between environments, and commercial app availability (there is still no true Photoshop, Lightroom, AutoCAD, etc. replacement on Linux unless you want to spend a whole lot of hours fucking around with WINE). Gaming isn't much of an issue any more as more and more games and gaming platforms get ported to Linux.

Seamless integration with networks is VASTLY superior in Linux than Windows, especially under KDE where you can fish:/ or smb:/ to a share directly in konqueror or dolphin, and interact with those ad-hoc mounts as if they were local folders and files. This makes it very corporate-friendly, if it weren't for all of the entrenched apps that are not available on Linux.

then microsoft isn't interested.the whole point is to get people to use metro apps. to pay for metro apps. to get a cut of metro apps sales.thus the push towards the metro ecosystem. supposedly it would also fix problems with some malware and so forth, but the real dollar bills would be from getting a cut from everything that is run on the pc. that is a huge pie. unsurprisingly traditional sw makers are asking why the fuck should they bow to that and are moving to subscription models partially as a backup against ms possibly being so stubborn as to force sw to be downloaded from their market sometime in the next 5 years or so.

they could easily do that if metro apps would have started to gain a lot of traction, too bad people don't like metro enough.

the simple fix would be to ship it with possibility to multitask metro apps and to run them in windows as default features, but then people might start asking why bother with metro apps at all. it's not like it's impossible to make touch friendly apps - with esentially the same api's - that aren't constrained to running inside metro vm.

(written on a windows 8, it's so nice that it comes with a pdf reader. too bad you can only run the piece of shit fullscreen and view just one pdf at time! and the fuck does some fucking single player games need my windows account and facebook for? ??).

The shift to a Metro UI was one of the big late-cycle mistakes that MS made with the Xbox 360 as well. The second-generation 360 UI which they used through the middle years of the cycle was about as good as anybody's managed on a console. For the final few months of its life, it actually worked really well with Kinnect's voice and gesture commands (which, sadly, couldn't be said for any games).

By contrast, the third generation Metro UI was ugly, hard to browse with a controller and almost unusable with voice/gesture controls. It seemed to have been designed with just two purposes; maximising the percentage of the screen given over to adverts and serving as an early push for the whole "Metro" concept.

Metro's ok for a tablet. Not great, but I've seen worse. For anything else - desktop, notebook or games console - it's dreadful.

The whole thing has the stink of the kind of dumb idea that investor relations departments think up as something that can be pushed at less-than-intelligent shareholders. "Look, we may have missed the whole smartphones and tablets thing, but we've got a really great unified UI concept now that will let us take over the world! Honest!."

It would only take a couple of those big institutional shareholders to get a clue and start asking a few pointed questions about the consumer-focussed parts of Microsoft to make life very, very uncomfortable for the company's management.

I don't see why MS couldn't have an app store that sold regular, non-metro apps. Sure resellers would be free to sell their apps however they want, but having the sales mechanism built right into Windows would probably work great for marketing. Just as selling with Google Play doesn't stop developers also selling their apps/games via the Amazon app store, or Humble Bundle, or as an APK on their website, the Windows store doesn't have to be the only way to buy software for Windows. All they really have to do is make it the easiest way to buy software for Windows, and people will naturally want to use it, and developers will naturally want to put their applications on there. I've spent way more money on software in the Google Play store than I have on all my other software purchases combined (not counting operating system purchases) since I got my Android phone 2 years ago. Because it's just so easy to buy stuff. I don't have to retain any registration keys. I don't have to search around a a million different sites for updates, and I don't even have to worry about whether it will install on my new device when the time comes.

yeah, it would make sense.

but the way you can look at it is this: if photoshop was at that store 1300 and only 1000 on adobes own site... it would be bad pr and the new os would crash even harder than it has now. but by inventing metro you can only buy metro apps from microsofts marketplace, thus the press cannot make direct price comparations, because the apps are only available in the ms store pricing. pretty nifty, eh?

of course the whole metro hubbub is bad pr too. but the 3 dollar apps are just spice. t

Always my number one rhetorical question when I encounter something totally brain damaged in a Microsoft product -- "They hired the best and brightest they could find with almost no limits on salary or benefits and this is the result they got?"

It kind of reminds me of the William F. Buckley quote -- " I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard Un

Between Windows 8 and trying to turn the Xbox into some sort of kludgy, half-assed DRM'ed TV tuner instead of a game console, I sometimes wonder wtf is going on in Redmond. Has Steve Balmer just checked out to lunch or something?

They've realised that the desktop as we know it is dead and are making a desperate effort to retool Windows into a tablet and smart-TV OS, while establishing the Xbox as their new hardware safe haven. They're not doing a great job, but the direction they're heading in is an unfortunate necessity. Customer PCs are on the way out. (Make your own "year of Linux on the desktop" joke, but Microsoft ceding the desktop market to the Unix-derivatives currently used for all Real Work would be great for things like d

Remember, Microsoft has always been reactionary rather than inventive. They wait to see where the market is going and then jump in, pretending to be the guys who invented. This worked well for years. Also, they have so much money that they can (unfortunately) afford to fail big and shrug it off. Vista was a disaster for sure, but it's just a historical footnote now. When you don't have to be right and have the money to just restart from the ground floor, you can gamble. So Windows 8 is the result of Microsoft incorrectly reading the marketplace, specifically in believing that nobody wants to buy PCs and that 100% of the world wants tablets and almost nobody on earth will ever buy or use a true PC again. Never in the past have they been held accountable and lost market share for being disastrously wrong, so I can't really fault them for expecting that to continue. I don't remember his name, but one tech writer wrote recently that Microsoft will continue to misread the market place and try to extract more and more revenue from the segments where in the past they had a stranglehold but are actually dying now (ie. Windows and Office). The Xbox thing is them being reactionary ("Kids use Tivo and we need to get us some of that money!") and trying to hold onto cash by making it unfriendly to play used games on. I don't claim to be a gamer or understand or know that market, so we'll see what happens. But their Windows and Office strategy is flawed because the push for more money out of Office is already driving people to cheaper alternatives and making Windows unfriendly to the businesses who need it to work reasonably well on true PCs is going to be a failure too.

"Microsoft should hire Infoword's writers as design consultants. Inforworld's staff doesn't have the luxury of being out of touch with users."

Judging by the fact that what was really just a simple article when it comes too was presented as some kind of faux-slideshow that randomly went white in the middle with a link return to slideshow (I assume my ad blocker half-killed a popup ad) I'd say they're perfectly well out of touch with users too.

Nope. As much as I agree with a lot of the Windows 8 hate, after experiencing it on my Samsung Ativ SmartPC Pro (which, by the way, is probably worse than the Surface Pro), those guys are just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

Instead of a simple "Allow us to stay exclusively within Metro or the Desktop" suggestion, they're advocating three seperate versions of Windows: One with only desktop, one with only metro, and a pseudo-version that makes you reboot if you want to switch from metro to desktop or vice-versa or if you want to use the touchscreen. They claim it's a minor issue, but it most certainly would not be - forcing a reboot is obviously not necessary (Nobody complains about Windows 8's oerformance) and it adds a non-trivial delay if you want to detach or reattach the keyboard and use Metro or Desktop, respectively.

In "good design", motion is supposed to direct your eye to important interface elements.

Panes or "Tetris Elements" or whatever they fucking call the distracting moving, flipping visual mess in Metro has been designed solely for distraction. Every task in Windows 8 takes longer amongst the worthless visual clutter begging for your attention. Why is this box jumping and drawing my eye? I don't know, it's not showing me anything new, and meanwhile I need to flip through another six pages of Tetris to find my b

From Win 7 to Win 8, the differences are simply too huge.
We've been using a desktop PC for about 20 yrs and basically, the core Win OS hasn't changed all that much. Start Button, Control Panel, etc..
I believe that as long as you have PCs operating with keyboard/mouse that you should be able to have the Win 7 experience. And then again, if possible, the Windows Classic experience without all the frills and thrills.
Well, that's my opinion anyways. It would make sense and it wouldn't be rattling user's cages so to speak.
Microsoft wants to get into the mobile world with their OS. Great, no problem, bring it on, but, maybe, they ought to make it a separate OS. It's going to be a while before a 'one solution' fits all approach will work when it comes to computing. For once, Microsoft should look at how Apple does it. It might LOOK all the same, but it isn't.

New PCs are what isn't selling, and that has nothing to do with Windows 8, no matter what the Slashdrones like to believe. That has to do with Moore's Law finally outpacing the needs of software, the change to near universal consumption on computers.

Hardware vendors need to make upgrading hardware compelling. Microsoft can't do that -- they're selling plenty of upgrades, as it is.

It's probably a good thing that we can all see this matter differently. The guys at Inforworld seem to want a very clear distinction between how a Desktop PC works and how "other devices" work, even imagining a hybrid operating system UI for the devices that today are not exactly desktops and are not exactly tablets.This idea shows up on/. A few days after we saw multiple hybrid products and prototypes at Computex, many of them using Windows 8 on machines with varied configurations. Would the people at Infoworld adjust their OS everytime someone comes up with a valid hardware prototype? Or would they react to wherever the OEMs are doing and adjust Windows whenever some new OEM design becomes successful enough? In either case, they are not acknowledging that Microsoft has and wants to have a say in how their product is used.

It seems the people at Infoworld gathered the common gripes and made a mock-up of how things could stay the same as much as possible, disregarding any aspirations that MS may have to develop their products towards what will sell in the future.By extending the idea of Personal Computer to include smartphones and tablets, within 10 years we will be looking at a PC market with a majority of devices without any MS product, unless Microsoft seriously increases sales of Windows Phone and Surface. It looks like people at Infoworld haven't noticed that these products do not have and do not need to show any familiarity with the old desktop and icons UI.

Windows blue is looking like a a gradual change to what feedback MS got from Windows 8, without detracting from those objectives of helping them get a stronger position on the tablet/mobile market. This Windows red mock-up would be 10 steps backwards on that route, leaving Windows in an shrinking island of "desktop" users, without a clear route for linking them with other devices, which is possibly the best thing about Windows 8.0

You'd be amazed. It's fairly easy to cram a million sales when you're MS. Just demand huge volumes in the contract
but defer the payment and make the sale returnable and POOF, you sold a million copies.

How many of those licenses had the disk reformatted and a pirate copy of Windows 7 installed?

Vista had downgrade rights to XP and a lot of people used them but it still counted as a Vista sale in Microsoft's accounts. If Windows 8 had downgrade rights to Windows 7 then I bet a *lot more* people would use it than they did with Vista.

Except that File Manager was still available in Windows 95 if you wanted it.

People said

the same thing when the "gummy" themed buttons in Windows XP showed up (oh, its not professional!).

Except that classic mode was available in XP if you wanted it.

They said the same thing when Vista added UAC.

Except that UAC could be disabled if you wanted to.

And they're saying the same thing now.

Except that now we're stuck using third party utilities to undo Microsoft's changes.

Turns out, for Microsoft, people "saying the same thing" works out very well financially.

And it is this line of thinking that may get Microsoft into trouble in the none-too-distant future. In the Windows 3.x/95/XP days you speak of, "computing" and "desktop computing" were synonymous for home users. If you wanted to get online, you used a desktop/laptop. Now though, many people's needs can be adequately met by iPads, Transformer-like tablets, and Chromebooks. Even Linux Mint has all but gotten the Linux Desktop situation sorted out (though I personally was a fan of Xandros in its day). Microsoft's response has been the polar opposite of what it's been in the past: instead of including classic modes, Microsoft has actively worked to remove such functionality. The first public beta had a start menu that could be enabled by group policy, presumably more people were enabling it than Microsoft was happy about and as a result it was forcibly removed. How this will impact Microsoft over the next five years is anyone's guess.

I don't know about that. On OSX, there's now an option to full screen apps. Which is great when I'm working in a graphics app or I want an insular terminal experience with no distractions. The problem is that the metro UI is kind of a mess. Charms aren't obvious and the whole thing with gestures is unintuitive. The snap together UI is neat for multiple apps at once, but, that is a slight plus in the face of so many fails.

DOS 6.22 of course, with Windows 3.11 for workgroups. I suggest also installing Trumpet Winsock in order to be able dial in to what is known as "the internet. Obviously you'll need to buy a modem for that.

the growth of OSX showed that the usual linux trope about there being no possibility for a competing desktop OS to succeed was bollocks

You do realise that (a) MacOS is very old and already had a very well established software base, and (b) Microsoft Office which is at about the 99.9% monopoly level has supported MacOS (X and pre-X) too?

I bet a large percentage of Mac owners also have a Windows PC/Bootcamp partition/VM as well. I know I do and everyone I know with a Mac does too. Macs also have had some presence in the market since before Microsoft even had a GUI or a monopoly and therefore have been in a better position than Linux or indeed any other competitor that arrived in the 90s.

The main reason why Linux on the desktop hasn't been very succesful is largely a marketing problem in my opinion.
Specifically, there is basically nobody who properly markets Linux, so a lot of people have never heard of it and even those that have largely think it's a command-line only hardcore-geek thing.
Linux needs an image change and it is slowly happening - look at steam etc.
I would also be very interested in your reasoning as to why GNU/Linux isn't very good.

> - OSX - anybody who tells you that this is somehow a better working environment than ms windows honestly is just lying.

Quit trolling. Do you even _use_ OSX on a daily basis?

I've been using computers since the early 80s and have used a ton of OSes: Apple DOS 3.3, Apple ProDos, DOS 2.x - 6.x, Win3.1.. Win8 (inclusive), Irix, BeOS. For the past 2 years I've been using OSX as part of my day job.

My thoughts based on _experience_: As a power user OSX is pretty darn good. You can Alt-Tab into & out-of games all day long without _any_ hiccups. On Windows alt-tabbing back INTO the game almost always forces a 1 or 2 second hiccup. The way Windows manages devices & scheduler in Windows is wonky.

+ The UI is good. Clean and (mostly) well designed (although Apple appears to be making more and more bone-headed decisions lately.) The 4 hot-corners of the desktop (Expose) is fantastic. Borders are only 1 pixel thick in OSX in contrast to the fugly 8 pixel width on Win 8. OS also has the advantage that MS Office shows the menu bar ALONG with the stupid ribbon.

+ On the MBP the trackpad blows away any Windows laptop I've tried.

+ BSD under the hood which makes porting to Linux helluva a lot easier for command line apps. XCode is a decent IDE.

- OSX Virtual Memory still stinks (I've been able to completely hard-lock OSX once about every 6 months) on 10.6 and 10.7.

- GPUs have always sucked on the MacBook. TF2 with everything turned down and barely able to get 20+ fps on a 3 yr old 17" MBP.

= When needed the majority run Windows in a VM (Parallels) and we have a few dedicated Windows boxes. A lot of developers (~20) also run Linus inside a VM (VMWare or VirtualBox) (no Plus nor Neg, equal = tie)

We have an office of ~70 people who use OSX on a daily basis and would also basically agree you are completely talking out of your ass. So yes, OSX is _good_ enough for daily use.

I've recently been made to switch from a Win8 machine to a brand new OSX machine. The Win8 machine has three monitors, 256ssd, 16bg ram, i7. The OSX machine is a Macbook Pro Retina i7 256ssd, 16bg ram with two external monitors. There are some cool things about OSX but there are many stupid things about OSX. And they're not stupid like "this is different" stupid, they're stupid like "this shit is stupid". Because I'm feeling verbose I'll list the really stupid low hanging fruit. And at the end I'll list what I really enjoy about it.

OSX

* I have to sign up for iTunes to keep my computer updated!?

* I HAVE TO GIVE ITUNES MY CC# TO KEEP MY COMPUTER UPDATED!?

* I have to restart my computer to keep it updated? I thought this was Unix?

Keyboard (external mac? keyboard)

* Why is the keyboard all fucked up? Two keys labeled delete? Is there some aversion to calling a backspace key a backspace key?

* Where the fuck did insert go!? You know some people actually use insert!

* For that matter where is num lock and scroll lock? Again, I use those keys!

* Why redesign the num pad into a Apple(TM) num pad and move all the keys around?

* The behavior of the home and end key is stupid! They jump to the end and beginging of the document instead of the end and begining of the line! What gives them the right?!

* They remove essential keys like insert but I have F1-F19!? And an eject key on a system that doesn't even have an optical drive? (not that they knew that about my system, so a small pass there.)

* Seriously? No Alt key? WTF, I thought this was UNIX! How the fuck am I supposed to use EMACS!?

OSX Windows

* WIndows present resize mouse cursors on some windows edges that cannot be resized! Inexcusable! I should be able to resize the window from any edge. And for god sakes, if I can't resize it from that edge don't show me a fucking resize cursor and make me think I'm losing my mind.

* What the hell is up with this full screen arrow. Useless shit. It removes all the windows from my other screens and throws up a lame gray background. Lame.

* Is this green control box maximize or what!? It seems like sometimes it wants to maximize height and width, and other times it will only maximize height. Be consistant. No, actually, always maximize both!

* I would be so happy if when I resize the top edge of the window to the top of the screen if the bottom would snap to the bottom of the screen like win7/8. I'm not saying this makes all the difference in the world, but when you make it difficult to resize (my first point on windows) this is even more important.

* More customization of color and style would be nice, but I'm not going to cry about too long about that.

OSX Finder

* Seriously? This is the worst piece of shit file manager I've ever seen. Apple has a lot of talented people, money and has had plenty of time to make something wonderful and they made this? As quickly as I could I replaced it, I'm using nuCommander now. Get your shit together Apple.

* I can't remove this POS from my dock without doing some serous surgery to the OS. Even if I do get it removed, it'll come back and stick there until I restart if I open it somehow. Grow up finder, not everyone should be forced to use you. But then, this is Apple, home of "we force you to use shit" so I shouldn't be surprised.

* I can't type a path in here? Fuck that! That alone makes this program trash. Really, a lot of the "finder replacements" are trash for the same reason. Are people afraid to have a path bar you can type in?

Apple Magic Mouse

* RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON!!!! Oh my god! I can't click this right mouse button like 90% of the time. Oh there's a right mouse button, but when you try and click it, it produces a left mouse click. You have to remove y

* I have to sign up for iTunes to keep my computer updated!?
* I HAVE TO GIVE ITUNES MY CC# TO KEEP MY COMPUTER UPDATED!?
* I have to restart my computer to keep it updated? I thought this was Unix?

As of Lion, you sign in with an Apple ID. That is not iTunes, but iTunes also uses this ID. You do not need a credit card number [apple.com] to update your OS. That is only required for purchases in the App Store.
If the update involves a kernel, kernel extension, Aqua/Quartz or other core component modification then yes, you will need to reboot. You probably have to reboot for updates more often than in a modern Unix due to the GUI integration, but generally less so than in Windows.

Keyboard (external mac? keyboard)
* Why is the keyboard all fucked up? Two keys labeled delete? Is there some aversion to calling a backspace key a backspace key?
* Where the fuck did insert go!? You know some people actually use insert!
* For that matter where is num lock and scroll lock? Again, I use those keys!
* Why redesign the num pad into a Apple(TM) num pad and move all the keys around?
* The behavior of the home and end key is stupid! They jump to the end and beginging of the document instead of the end and begining of the line! What gives them the right?!
* They remove essential keys like insert but I have F1-F19!? And an eject key on a system that doesn't even have an optical drive? (not that they knew that about my system, so a small pass there.)
* Seriously? No Alt key? WTF, I thought this was UNIX! How the fuck am I supposed to use EMACS!?

Yeah, because that was my only complaint./s My point was there was a lot of unused keys and they've removed a lot of keys that are very useful (alt, scroll lock, insert, num lock). But you're free to try and spin my comments however you like.

No. It isn't remotely true. Unless you've purchased one or more applications through the Mac App Store, in which case you would have had to set up a valid credit card to open an account and purchase the software in the first place.

At worst, if you have no purchased apps, Software Update will ask for a (free) valid AppleID in order to update some bundled apps like iPhoto (part of iLife which comes bundled with all new Macs). An AppleID is simply an email address and password that is registered with Apple. Se

How nice for you. But some of us need a desktop to actually get some work done. And there, it sucks.

I don't think it was the GP's decision for MS to (unwisely) try to unify desktop and touchscreen interfaces into one OS. He just pointed out that it worked well for him on a tablet. (And that he didn't like it on a desktop.) Why put the hate on him? You got the wrong guy. He didn't ruin your desktop.

BTW: Hey, Ubuntu team? You seem to be going in the same direction of merging tablet and desktop interfaces . . . I hope you're studying this debacle and learning from it.

Have you even used Windows 8 on a desktop? Care to explain how the workflow is different in any meaningful way? Because I've been using Windows 8 exclusively for months at work and have found it to be 5% "different," 5% better, and 90% identical.

[OT]An American, an Australian and a German walk into a bar. The American greets the bartender and says "I'll have a Budweiser please." The Australian says "I'll have a pint of Fosters, mate." The German considers things for a moment and says "I think I will have a mint tea, if you have any." The American and the Australian question the German's judgement, and in reply he simply shrugs and says "well, it's not like you're having a beer".

"I wish there would be some minimal Windows that just shows the desktop where I can double click on the Game I want."

Um... Windows 8 has its issues, but this is actually a use case that it's almost perfect for. It boots quickly to a screen with 1 big square icon for each of your games, which will launch the game when clicked on. You'd need to remove a few icons initially, but then you'd be set and could organize your games into whatever order or groupings you want.